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Congress to review NSA's surveillance

Lawmakers will review domestic surveillance laws in the wake of a leaked document showing the National Security Agency (NSA) has collected millions of phone records, which provoked an uproar in the Capitol.

The government's admission of "PRISM," a classified program in which data is mined from the servers of nine leading Internet companies, is also expected to garner scrutiny. It allows the government to extract photos, videos, emails, audio and documents to track individuals. An administration official on Thursday night insisted it was not used to track U.S. citizens.

Congress has repeatedly voted to reauthorize language in the 2001 Patriot Act granting intelligence agencies broad discretion to collect phone data, but many lawmakers were not fully aware of the implication of their votes.

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A report Thursday by The Guardian newspaper that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court granted an order to the FBI in April to authorize the collection of millions of phone records put new scrutiny on the surveillance laws.

“We need to understand the scope and the depth,” said McCain. “If it was something where we just blanket started finding out who everybody called and under what circumstances, then I think it deserves congressional hearings.

“Before we leap to the conclusion that it’s absolutely wrong, let’s find out the details of the program,” he added.

It would prohibit the provider of an electronic communication service from knowingly divulging to any government entity the contents of a communication in electronic storage, according to a summary by the Congressional Research Service.

“I think that bill has a really good chance of passing,” Paul said.

Feinstein said in an interview Thursday that the surveillance was authorized by the Patriot Act, which does not expire until 2015. Congress passed the law in 2001 and renewed the relevant provisions in 2005, 2009, 2010 and 2011, according to a Judiciary panel source.

Intelligence agencies briefed senators about the program Thursday afternoon.

Feinstein said colleagues should have known about the details of the surveillance program from briefings offered by the Intelligence panel.